


I'd promise you anything for another shot at life

by failsafe



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Bonding, Island Fic, Multi, Peace, ToT: Chocolate Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 07:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8393236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: None of them know what is to come.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sheeana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheeana/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy your gift! Title is from the song 'Disloyal Order of Water Buffalos' by Fall Out Boy (listen if you like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW44bkHON8c). I was just listening to the song and some of the phrasing really felt apropos to the theme of the overlapping relationships between the three of them that are to come. Happy Halloween!

The first little while on the island, none of them know what is to come except that it will be dangerous and difficult. Shado and Slade already know what they intend to do about this. Oliver, on the other hand, seems less than sure. They help him become more sure, but there is only so much training his weak, sheltered form can take as it becomes something else. He believes that it is almost more than he can bear, almost endless, but whether he recognizes it or not, for each of them there are also long stretches of silence. Of stillness. Of something warmer than silence and stillness.

Not knowing what is to come, it is hard to call these moments, these hours, stretching out into cold breezes across the warm island, warm breezes across the cold island, blowing in from the seemingly endless ocean, anything but _now_. Certainly, for a while, none of them is so foolish as to think it is anything that _matters_. And for a while, none of them is brave enough to think it doesn't matter. 

Shado wonders whether or not the men in the ruined plane with her ever notice how  _quiet_ it is, or if they ever could for the sound of their breathing when, at last, both of them are asleep. They rarely lapse into outright snoring, and she thinks if one did, the other might complain. She can still hear them breathing – too much to sleep, sometimes. 

A certain fruit on the island they discover eventually has flesh that is thicker, denser, somewhat more satisfying than anything else they have found. So far, it has not revealed any unpleasant surprises or secrets. They search for them, a peaceful form of hunting, one day when the air is a more pleasant sticky-damp than is typical. The breeze comes just when the sweat on Shado's back becomes a little disgusting before she pushes past the boundary of disgust and back into survival. It makes her sigh with relief at the almost pleasant weight of carrying a little makeshift sack on her shoulder. She looks back over that shoulder. 

“Happy hunting?” she asks Slade. 

“Would it be strange if it seems a little weird not to stab anything in a day's work?” 

“A little,” Shado replies with a half-shrug of her free shoulder. 

Oliver's weakness is also a sensitivity. She can see the two, like a pendulum, like the symbol of yin and yang, swirling in his eyes. He tries to carve something, sometimes, as a hobby. She wonders if it is a weapon, a tool, or a toy. She sits down beside him to watch one evening while the sun is going down. Earlier that day, he had killed a few fowl for their supper. They are less hungry now, and she wonders if he has circled back around to the need to survive bothering him. 

She places her hand on his arm – already strong, growing stronger, but with a softness of civilization that makes her homesick and afraid. 

“Are you nearly finished?” she asks him. 

He looks confused for a moment, then she nods to his little whittled branch. 

“Oh,” he says softly. He frowns at it. “... Not yet,” he admits. “I'm not sure what I'm making.” 

Before long, she leans her head over, briefly resting it on his shoulder. She does so without protest and without reaction. He keeps whittling, she keeps breathing, and there is silence. 

Slade walks into the plane and rattles at his throat. She lifts her head up and smiles at him. 

“What're you doing, kid?” he asks. 

“I don't think he knows,” Shado answers for him, pleasantly. 

“I know he doesn't,” Slade agrees as he helps himself to some of their shared supply of water. 

 


End file.
